Wal-Mart denies that $299 HD players are coming

Yesterday, Fuh Yuan and Wal-Mart both denied that the story reported earlier, that millions of dollars of HD players had been purchased by Wal-Mart for sale at $299 USD, and that there had been no deal made yet.

Fuh Yuan issued a statement stating that Wal-Mart was shopping around searching for a mass of HD-DVD players but there had been no deal made, nor a price set.

Wal-Mart only gave a brief denial of the reports, which lead analysts to suggest that Wal-Mart was indeed a supporter of HD-DVD and that they were searching for a mass amount of players in the format.

We may not know where Wal-Mart stands until the holidays or even beyond and for now the retailer will continue to sell players and discs in both formats.

On the manufacturing end, Toshiba said it will continue to license its HD-DVD technology to Chinese manufacturers in the hopes the prices of HD-DVD players will continue to plummet. Toshiba's current entry level bargain player, sold at $399 USD, is widely considered to be sold at below cost price, and $399 is still pretty expensive and aimed mostly at early adopters not the casual consumer.

All that has happened is the Chinese company has apologised for making public something Walmart wanted kept confidential (which is a standard business practice) and for releasing details before every 'i' was dotted and 't' was crossed.

The statements of both Fuh Yuan and Wal-Mart could hardly be more vague and do not in fact contain a flat denial of the deal.

Those who want to believe those very inexpensive Chinese HD DVD players are not coming with Walmart ought to bear in mind that they are coming with 3 other Chinese brands towards the end of the year anyways.

......and talk about "exclusives" is a tad premature.
As we have already seen and can clearly see with the supposedly 'exclusive' BD hardware manufacturers that 'exclusive' status can be very easily abandoned.
They'll all eventually go dual format, eventually anyways.

Content is where it is at and HD DVD will be offering 600 movies by the end of this year to BD's 350-400.